Running a restaurant is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done — and I say that as someone who loved it, every day.
The margins are razor thin, the operations are relentless, and the lifestyle demands everything you have. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who doesn’t go in with eyes wide open.
But done right, owning a restaurant can be deeply rewarding, even scalable.
Even in San Francisco.
It taught me more about business, people, and resilience than anything else I’ve experienced.
San Francisco — a city I love — added its own layer of complexity.
Health and building codes delayed our openings by months, and cost us thousands of dollars in expenses before we ever served a single customer.
Health inspections were inconsistent. And some of the most well-intentioned voter-passed legislation — policies I personally supported — became serious financial and administrative burdens in practice.
The city’s progressive ambitions and the realities of running a small business don’t always reconcile neatly.
But I also had real support. The Office of Small Business under then-Mayors Ed Lee and London Breed was genuinely helpful.
Local merchants associations and district development efforts led by our supervisors gave small businesses a real voice. These weren’t just symbolic — they were the kinds of programs that gave you a fighting chance when the headwinds picked up.
That said, I’ve never believed in blaming a city or a government for a business failure. It’s too simple, and it lets entrepreneurs off the hook.
Take San Francisco’s Health Care Security Ordinance — one of the country’s first laws mandating employer-sponsored health care for businesses with more than 19 employees. For a small casual restaurant, that was a significant hit.
But we raised our prices, explained exactly why to our customers, and were transparent with our team.
The result? Our employees felt valued, stayed loyal, and kept delivering an exceptional product.
We had less than 10% annual employee turnover — essentially unheard of in the hospitality industry.
The challenge of raising prices to pay for health insurance forced us to build a better business.
The coronavirus pandemic tested everyone, but again, the city showed up in meaningful ways. Temporary caps on delivery platform take-rates from services like Uber Eats and DoorDash let us build a delivery business we’d never had before.
Temporary alcohol delivery approval opened another revenue stream. None of it replaced what we’d lost, but it kept us in the game.
I’m genuinely bullish on San Francisco restaurants right now. Consumer appetite for dining out has clearly rebounded, and Mayor Daniel Lurie has brought real energy to the city’s recovery — faster permitting, cleaner commercial corridors, a commitment to making SF an attractive destination for locals and tourists alike.
When I met the mayor at a Golden Gate Restaurant Association (GGRA) meeting a couple of years ago, he made specific promises to restaurant owners.
From what I can tell, he’s kept them.
Lurie reminds me of the kind of resilient entrepreneur who figures out how to win no matter what’s thrown at him.
That spirit, at the civic level, is exactly what San Francisco’s restaurant scene needs.
Nate Pollak is an entrepreneur and Bay Area business leader who co-founded and co-owned The American Grilled Cheese Kitchen chain for more than a decade.
